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21 Jan 17:36

America’s Miracle Meat: The Story of Spam (+ 3 Recipes)

by Jeremy Anderberg

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Nowadays when you hear the word “spam,” you probably think of the unwanted emails you get from unknown sources soliciting you for money and information. Little do many people know, the term actually refers to and originates from the glorious canned luncheon meat of the same name. In the 90s when email became popular, users began referring to a classic Monty Python sketch to talk about these unwanted but ubiquitous messages. In the sketch, a couple is dining at a restaurant in which Spam is part of nearly every item on the menu, much to the chagrin of the wife. It’s a funny and weird look at people’s love/hate relationship with the meat:

Email users adopted the “spam” moniker to refer to any unwanted, mass emails — because Spam (the meat) was often unwanted and yet everywhere.

Before being the butt of a joke in 1970, though, it was on the losing end of soldiers’ jokes during WWII. As we’ll see later, Spam supplied our armed forces with many of their meals. Prior to WWII, however, it enjoyed a brief stint as a popular and innovative product born from the ingenuity of southern Minnesotans.

Since its inception in 1937, Spam has earned heaping amounts of both praise and scorn. It’s truly one of those foods that you either love or hate (and in my experience, the haters often haven’t even tried it!). As I’m sure you can already tell, I rather enjoy Spam. And I should; I was born in Spamtown, USA (Austin, MN, that is), where Hormel is headquartered and where Spam is produced. There’s even a fantastic Spam museum there, which is surprisingly popular among Hawaiians visiting the mainland (we’ll see why a bit later) as well as foreign tourists.

Today, we’re going to explore Spam’s fascinating, oscillating history, find out what this gelatinous and confusing block of meat really is, and share some recipes for you to try out. Tasty and cheap, Spam’s been a food icon for over 75 years, and it’s time you knew the story behind it and put some on your plate.

Spam’s Humble Beginnings

In the late 1920s, canned meat became a common source of food for commercial endeavors — restaurants, hotels, even butcher shops and delis. As the depression took hold, its popularity increased, as companies didn’t wish to be held hostage by fresh meat’s high prices nor by its seasonality. (Believe or not, fresh and natural meat is seasonal!) Whole canned hams and chickens, on the other hand, were always available, lasted nearly forever, and were cheap and easy to cook — slice and heat and you’re done!

Hormel was the leader for this category of food in both inventiveness and food quality. They were one of the first major companies to try canning whole meats, and used quality products to do so. This included the use of pork shoulder, which is a decent cut of meat, but mostly ignored in that era because of the time and energy it took to get the meat off the bone. Hormel’s product was more expensive, so competitors just undercut prices with cheaper ingredients (leftover parts, basically), and the now-famed Hormel had to do something different to stand out. Company president Jay Hormel had an idea for a household product, something family-sized, that would set Hormel apart from the rest.

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And so in 1937, Spam was born, after two years of testing various products and recipes. The name was the result of a contest that Jay Hormel held at his mansion in southern Minnesota as part of a New Year’s Eve party. A dapper fellow named Ken Daigneau, brother of a Hormel VP, shouted out “Spam!” almost instantly. He was an actor from New York, but Spam would be his crowning achievement — probably not what he had in mind when he started his career. The word stands for either spiced ham, or shoulder of pork and ham, which is odd, as the original product didn’t actually have any ham in it! It was added in later, as so many people just assumed it was there. It’s likely that after tasting the yet-unnamed meat at the party, Mr. Daigneau thought it mainly a ham product.

Supposedly only a handful of Hormel executives know the truth about what the name stands for, but my hunch is that nobody actually knows, and shoulder of pork and ham would be most appropriate, as that is what Spam is. Other names considered were Brunch and Spic (the latter being an old English term for fat or grease rather than the derogatory meaning we know today) — thankfully neither of those were the winner.

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Selling the new product was still a tough go, however. People hadn’t seen canned meat on grocery store shelves and were wary of a meat product that didn’t have to be refrigerated. So Hormel took to their creative department and made sure they saturated newspapers, radio waves, and women’s magazines with punchy ads. It was sold to housewives as a “miracle meat” — it didn’t need “pampering in the refrigerator,” could be cooked in literally minutes, and tasted delicious to boot! It was also versatile, as one slogan chimed, “Slice it, dice it, fry it, bake it. Cold or hot, Spam hits the spot.” The ads worked; by 1940, 70% of Americans were eating Spam and the company had sold over 40 million cans.

What Is Spam?

People tend to believe that Spam is made from leftover pig parts and chock full of artificial additives, but it’s actually downright wholesome compared to other processed foods; its only ingredients are pork shoulder, ham, salt, sugar, and some sodium nitrite. Eating fast food is definitely much worse for you than Spam.

While you’ll see a lot of sources out there saying the canned meat is made mostly of ham, it’s about 90% pork shoulder and 10% ham. It contains zero non-meat fillers, nor any snouts, lips, ears, etc. While the FDA allows tongue and other mystery pig parts in luncheon meat, Hormel doesn’t use any in Spam. The pink color, which tends to understandably throw people off, is entirely from the sodium nitrite, which is a preservative. It’s not all that good for you — no preservative really is — but it’s the same thing found in hot dogs, deli meats, etc. A little bit of it now and then won’t kill ya.

Perhaps the most offensive trait of Spam is the gloopy gel that coats the meat and tends to make a lovely vacuum-sucking sound as it comes out of the tin. This gel that coats and coaxes the meat out of the can is called aspic — basically the stock fat that comes from the meat after it’s cooked. Don’t worry, it’s a natural thing, not some added chemical to help it slide out of the can, as many folks assume. In fact, this gelatinous goo is quite good for you, as it’s almost entirely protein. It should be noted that as of a few years ago there is a small amount of potato starch in Spam, as to reduce the gooey coating a little bit.

Spam, uniquely, is cooked in its can. The ingredients are vacuum mixed, then canned, then cooked hydrostatically — meaning water is the source of the heat. This method of cooking the meat in the tin is why Spam has a near-indefinite shelf-life.

How WWII Changed Spam Forever

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While spam was already a national hit by the time WWII began, the war would take its ubiquity to a whole new level. The military loved canned luncheon meat because it was nutritious, filling, cheap, easily transportable, and had an extremely long shelf-life. By the time the war was over, Hormel had provided 150 million pounds of meat to the war effort, and during that time, 90 percent of the company’s canned goods were going to the military.

While widespread dissemination of spam made Jay Hormel and his company rich, the soldiers on the receiving end of shipments were less happy about the canned meat’s infiltration of their rations. You would be too if it’s nearly all you ate for years on the front lines. It was meant to be served at bases and camps as a B ration along with a variety of other foods, but various distribution difficulties and other wartime issues meant that GIs were routinely getting served Spam 2-3 times per day. WWII veteran Thomas Clancy recalls, “You had it fried in the morning with chemical eggs. They burned it black as a painted door. They’d cut it up and put it into stews. They put it in sandwiches. They backed it with tomato sauce. They gave it to us on the beach. You got so you really hated it.”

Because of its pervasiveness overseas, it earned catchphrases like “ham that didn’t pass its physical,” “meat loaf without basic training,” and “the real reason war was hell.”

Unbeknownst to soldiers, though, military Spam was different than U.S. consumer Spam. It was sent in 6lb tins, didn’t contain ham, and was extra cooked and salted to deal with any bitter cold and brutally hot environment the meat might be found in. Although they weren’t getting “real” Spam, the soldiers spared no effort railing against it, writing up poems, drawing cartoons, and sending Jay Hormel thousands and thousands of hate-filled letters. One anonymous poem became especially (in)famous:

“For breakfast they will fry it;
For supper it is baked;
For dinner it goes delicate —
They have it pat-a-caked.
Next morning it’s with flapjacks,
Or maybe powdered eggs —
For God’s sake where do they get it?
It must come in by kegs.

Oh, surely for the evening meal
They’ll cook up something new!
But the cooks they are uncanny,
Now the Spam is in the stew.
And thus the endless cycle goes;
It never seems to cease —
There’s Spam in cake and Spam in pie
And Spam in rancid grease.”

Such scorn ate at Mr. Hormel. In an interview in 1945, he said “Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t have…” but couldn’t bear to finish the sentence. The interviewer noted “We got the distinct impression that being responsible for Spam might be too great a burden for any one man.”

Because of their distaste for Spam as a foodstuff, soldiers found a variety of other uses for it during wartime. Its greasy fattiness made it useful in numerous ways: as a skin conditioner, as gun lubricant, as waterproofing material for boots and tents, and even mixed with lighter fluid or gasoline as a candle. Some soldiers inked Spam slices to use as playing cards and were able to play poker with them for a period of multiple months. Even the discarded tins were repurposed to make pots and pans and even toy trains.

While the men who served abroad may have loathed it (for its repetition if nothing else), housewives both stateside and in England sung its praises. One British woman noted its “fragrant aroma” and also “its perfect flavour and texture”; another said that champagne and caviar didn’t stand up to “precious, succulent, beautiful Spam.” Rosie the Riveter even promoted the meat in one ad.

This dichotomy of course led to some misunderstandings at home. It was joked that a man’s worst nightmare would be coming home from the war only to find Spam on the plate for his first meal back:

spam foreign service mag

Even with all the negativity, Spam actually enjoyed a post-war boom. For every vocal anti-Spam soldier, there were plenty who came to enjoy it. Beyond that, Jay Hormel was well aware of the vitriol, and produced another big ad campaign to fight it: the Hormel girls.

After the war ended, Hormel created a regiment of 60 traveling performers, most of them being war vets. It doubled as an opportunity to provide jobs for veteran women, and it drummed up positive support for products like Spam and Dinty Moore. At one point in the early 50s Music with the Hormel Girls was a top-rated radio show on three different networks. The show was an early casualty of TV, but the impact for Spam was solidified, and while the country didn’t necessarily love their canned meat, folks’ attitude towards it became more neutral than downright negative.

Spam Today

Spam was used sparingly during the Korean War, and by the 90s was phased out of use in military rations altogether. Ironically, given its former ubiquity, Spam is a semi-popular item at commissaries around the world because it’s different than what soldiers would normally eat from the mess hall.

Even amongst the general public, spam is enjoying a bit of a renaissance. Given its cheap price, it unsurprisingly enjoyed an upswing during the 2008 recession. And the product recently celebrated its 75th birthday, which brought a little bit of spotlight back to Spam.

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Much like Pabst Blue Ribbon, Spam offers a nostalgic throwback to a different era. Yet an affinity for the meat need hardly be a hipster affectation; it’s a truly frugal, convenient, and versatile food. Writers from culture mags and newspapers have been trying it out, and often are surprisingly delighted with the results; as one writer noted, “It was pretty tasty. It made a nice lunch and I ate every bit of it… Frankly, if I didn’t know I was eating Spam I would have thought it was real chorizo.” It’s even started appearing in haute cuisine, serving as a lowbrow highlight on highbrow menus.

Spam is in fact the 120th best-selling product out of the 30,000 products that the average grocery store carries. The southeast, particularly, seems to have an affinity, with the average person eating one can per year — twice the national average.

Hawaii, though, is where Spam really shines. Inhabitants there consume an average of four cans per year, and it’s often listed on fast food menus, sold in gas stations as snacks, and even featured in sit-down establishments. It started during the war, of course, when refrigeration was hard to come by and so was fresh meat. Spam would stay fresh out of doors for long periods of time, and became the lunch of choice for local plantation workers. It also became an important source of protein when Japanese-Hawaiians were restricted from deep sea fishing by the U.S. government. Spam simply replaced the fish, and it became a food staple. Unlike weary soldiers, Hawaiians held fast to their love of Spam — probably because it was at least partially their choice and not something they were forced to eat.

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Beyond the U.S., Spam remains popular worldwide and is available in 44 countries. It’s especially popular in East Asian countries, as it became a staple of the post-war recovery. Korea is in fact the second largest consumer of Spam (behind America), and it’s considered a little bit of a delicacy. Hormel has sold over 8 billion cans of the miracle meat since 1937, and the line has recently expanded to include flavors like Teriyaki, Chorizo, Jalapeno, and more.

I tried my hand at a few Spam recipes with three different varieties of the meat. One is an old recipe of my grandma’s that I grew up loving, one is a traditional Hawaiian staple, and one is a simple breakfast creation:

Recipes

Grandma’s Pizza Burgers

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This recipe was always one of my favorites growing up. It’s been passed down a couple generations, and now I pass it onto our Art of Manliness readers. Use it well. This makes a big batch, as Grandma always served a big crowd and froze the leftovers. This should make 20 pizza burgers or so, and most people will eat 2-3.

Ingredients

  • 1 can Spam (regular)
  • 2lb ground beef
  • 1 16oz can pizza sauce
  • 1 tbsp sage
  • 1 tbsp oregano
  • mozzarella cheese (sliced)
  • English muffins

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
  2. Brown the beef and drain
  3. Dice Spam
  4. Mix together beef, Spam, pizza sauce, sage, and oregano
  5. Spoon mixture onto open-faced English muffin
  6. Top with a slice of mozzarella cheese
  7. Place in oven for 10 minutes, until cheese is melted

Hawaiian Spamburger

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While the quintessential Hawaiian Spam dish is Spam musubi, the combo of Spam and pineapple on a sandwich is also found all over the islands. This is a recipe you can really make your own by adding beef or other meats to it, as well as various cheeses and vegetables.

Ingredients

  • Spam (jalapeno)
  • pineapple (sliced or ringed rather than chunked)
  • mayo
  • Swiss cheese
  • onion bun (my preference, but you can use any bun)

Directions

  1. Preheat grill to medium-high
  2. Slice Spam — I used two half-inch slices
  3. Slice pineapple — again, I used two half-inch slices, enough to pretty much cover the bun
  4. Place Spam and pineapple on grill for about 5-7 minutes, flipping once
  5. Apply mayo to bun, then add Spam, pineapple, and cheese in your your desired order

Spam & Eggs Breakfast Burrito

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This bad boy is simple, but fills you up in the morning and tastes great. I made this up based on the simple breakfast burritos I enjoy on a regular basis, so use this as a jumping off point.

Ingredients

  • 1 large tortilla
  • 3 eggs
  • Spam (chorizo)
  • shredded cheese
  • green salsa (I love Mrs. Renfro’s hot green)

Directions

  1. Preheat skillet over medium-high heat
  2. Dice one-quarter to one-third of a can of Spam
  3. Throw the Spam in the skillet and let it heat for 5 min on its own
  4. Toss in the eggs and scramble them with the Spam
  5. Once done, place on tortilla, add cheese and salsa, and enjoy!

Do you have memories of Spam from the military or from growing up? What’s your favorite Spam creation? I’d love to hear it!

_____________________

Source:

Spam: A Biography by Carolyn Wyman

19 Nov 17:51

The Lesser Known Wisdom of Benjamin Franklin

by Brett & Kate McKay

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Editor’s Note: Benjamin Franklin was one of the most quotable men in history. Everyone knows his famous sayings like “God helps them who help themselves,” and “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” But his vast body of writings contain many fantastic bits of sagacity that aren’t as commonly noted. Below I’ve compiled some of my favorite, lesser known pearls of old Ben’s wisdom. Hope you enjoy.

“If a sound body and a sound mind, which is as much as to say health and virtue, are to be preferred before all other considerations, ought not men, in choosing a business either for themselves or children, to refuse such as are unwholesome for the body, and such as make a man too dependent, too much obliged to please others, and too much subjected to their humors in order to be recommended and get a livelihood?”

“There are in life real evils enough, and it is folly to afflict ourselves with imaginary ones; it is time enough when the real ones arrive.”

“After all, wedlock is the natural state of man. A bachelor is not a complete human being. He is like the odd half of a pair of scissors, which has not yet found its fellow, and therefore is not even half so useful as they might be together.”

“If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.”

“To be content, look backward on those who possess less than yourself, not forward on those who possess more. If this does not make you content, you don’t deserve to be happy.”

“The worship of God is a duty; the hearing and reading of sermons may be useful; but if men rest in hearing and praying, as too many do, it is as if a tree should value itself in being watered and putting forth leaves, tho’ it never produced any fruit.”

“Eat to please yourself, but dress to please others.”

“I would advise you to read with a pen in hand, and enter in a little book short hints of what you find that is curious, or that may be useful; for this will be the best method of imprinting such particulars in your memory.”

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“Glass, china, and reputation are easily cracked and never well mended.”

“When you incline to have new clothes, look first well over the old ones, and see if you cannot shift with them another year, either by scouring, mending, or even patching if necessary. Remember, a patch on your coat, and money in your pocket, is better and more creditable, than a writ on your back, and no money to take it off.”

“Hope and faith may be more firmly built upon charity, than charity upon faith and hope.”

“Our opinions are not in our own power; they are formed and governed much by circumstances that are often as inexplicable as they are irresistible.”

“A man of words and not of deeds, is like a garden full of weeds.”

“The art of getting riches consists very much in thrift. All men are not equally qualified for getting money, but it is in the power of every one alike to practice this virtue.”

“He that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the time he promises, may at any time, and on any occasion, raise all the money his friends can spare. This is sometimes of great use.”

“The ancients tell us what is best; but we must learn of the moderns what is fittest.”

“The most trifling actions of a man, in my opinion, as well as the smallest features and lineaments of the face give a nice observer some notion of his mind.”

“An old young man will be a young old man.”

“By the collision of different sentiments, sparks of truth are struck out, and political light is obtained. The different factions, which at present divide us, aim all at the public good; the differences are only about the various modes of promoting it.”

“A great talker may be no fool, but he is one that relies on him.”

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“Be studious in your profession, and you will be learned. Be industrious and frugal and you will be rich. Be sober and temperate and you will be healthy. Be in general virtuous and you will be happy.”

“Fear to do ill, and you need fear naught else.”

“I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults — if they are such; — because I think a general government necessary for us, and there is no form of government but what may be a blessing to the people, if well administered; and I believe further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.” (Speech made in the Constitutional Convention, 1787)

“It is a common error in friends, when they would extol their friends, to make comparisons, and to depreciate the merits of others.”

“If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing.”

“There are two ways of being happy — we may either diminish our wants or augment our means — either will do, the result is the same; and it is for each man to decide for himself, and do that which happens to be the easiest. If you are idle or sick or poor, however hard it may be to diminish your wants, it will be harder to augment your means. If you are active and prosperous, or young, or in good health, it may be easier for you to augment your means than to diminish your wants. But if you are wise, you will do both at the same time, young or old, rich or poor, sick or well; and if you are wise, you will do both in such a way as to augment the general happiness of society.”

“Each year one vicious habit rooted out, in time might make the worst man good throughout.”

“Some, to make themselves considerable, pursue learning; others grasp at wealth; some aim at being thought witty; and others are only careful to make the most of a handsome person; but what is wit, or wealth, or form, or learning, when compared with virtue? It is true we love the handsome, we applaud the learned, and we fear the rich and powerful; but we even worship and adore the virtuous.”

“Having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information or fuller consideration to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.”

“The wit of conversation consists more in finding it in others, than showing a great deal yourself. He who goes out of your company pleased with his own facetiousness and ingenuity, will the sooner come into it again.”

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“The way to be safe, is never to be secure.”

“The way to secure peace is to be prepared for war. They that are on their guard, and appear ready to receive their adversaries, are in much less danger of being attacked, than the supine, secure, and negligent.”

“Happiness consists more in small conveniences or pleasures that occur every day, than in great pieces of good fortune that happen but seldom to a man in the course of his life.”

“It is said that the Persians, in their ancient constitution, had public schools in which virtue was taught as a liberal art or science; and it is certainly of more consequence to a man, that he has learned to govern his passions in spite of temptations, . . . than to be a master of all the arts and sciences in the world beside.”

“A brother may not be a friend, but a friend will always be a brother.”

“Men are subject to various inconveniences merely through lack of a small share of courage, which is a quality very necessary in the common occurrences of life, as well as in a battle. How many impertinences do we daily suffer with great uneasiness, because we have not courage enough to discover our dislike.”

“That sort of wit, which employs itself insolently in criticizing and censuring the words and sentiments of others’ conversation, is absolute folly; for it answers none of the ends of conversation.”

“I believe long habits of virtue have a sensible effect on the countenance.”

“I never saw an oft-removed tree, 
nor yet an oft-removed family, 
that throve so well as those that settled be.”

“When there is so much to be done for yourself, your family, and your country, be up by peep of day! Let not the sun look down and say, ‘Inglorious here he lies!'”

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“It is observable that God has often called men to places of dignity and honor, when they have been busy in the honest employment of their vocation. Saul was seeking his father’s asses, and David keeping his father’s sheep, when called to the kingdom. The shepherds were feeding their flocks, when they had their glorious revelation.”

“If you would not be forgotten, do things worth remembering.”

“To expect people to be good, to be just, to be temperate, etc., without showing them how they should become so, seems like the ineffectual charity mentioned by the apostle, which consisted in saying to the hungry, the cold and the naked, be ye fed, be ye warmed, be ye clothed, without showing them how they should get food, fire or clothing.”

“Would you live with ease, do what you ought and not what you please.”

“Man and woman have each of them qualities and tempers in which the other is deficient, and which in union contribute to the common felicity.”

“When I am employed in serving others, I do not look upon myself as conferring favors, but as paying debts. I have received much kindness from men to whom I shall never have an opportunity of making the least direct returns; and numberless mercies from God, who is infinitely above being benefited by our services. Those kindnesses from men I can, therefore, only return on their fellow-men, and I can only show my gratitude for those mercies from God by a readiness to help His other children.”

“A little home well filled, a little field well tilled, and a little wife well willed, are great riches.”

“It is generally agreed to be folly to hazard the loss of a friend rather than to lose a jest. But few consider how easily a friend may be thus lost. Depending on the known regard their friends have for them, jesters take more freedom with friends than they would dare to do with others, little thinking how much deeper we are wounded by an affront from one we love.”

“Life, like a dramatic piece, should not only be conducted with regularity, but it should finish handsomely.”

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11 Nov 23:53

Help for the Shy Guy — Step 2: Identify the Faulty Thinking That Leads to Your Social Awkwardness

by Brett & Kate McKay

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Last week we began a three-part series on how to overcome shyness — a feeling of social anxiety and discomfort that can hold us back from forming warm relationships, reaching our goals, and just enjoying life in general. In the last post, we explored the nature of shyness including its roots and symptoms. We ended by discussing some of the causes of shyness, and noted that faulty thinking about socializing is the most significant one. Today we will examine in greater detail the self-sabotaging mindset that leads to shyness.

Framing our social interactions with faulty beliefs contributes to shy feelings and behaviors in two ways. First, faulty thinking makes social encounters seem more stressful and threatening than they actually are. So much so, that the shy individual will feel a sense of dread in simply contemplating these interactions, and will avoid socializing in order to prevent imaginary harms from befalling them. Second, the anxiety created by negative, misguided cognition will often trigger acute self-consciousness during social encounters. This self-consciousness, as we will see, perpetuates a cycle of shy feelings and behavior that prevents people from successfully and comfortably socializing with others.

What are the common faulty beliefs, errant assumptions, and negative cognitive biases that sap our confidence and torpedo our social interactions? Let’s now take a look at the different ways a self-sabotaging mindset manifests itself before, during, and after social interactions.

The Faulty Beliefs and Behaviors That Increase Anxiety/Shyness Before a Potential Social Interaction

Faulty, negative thoughts in anticipation of social interactions can create a feeling of stress and anxiety that leads shy people to avoid such encounters when they can. Shy people will often skip an event, leave a party early, or abruptly break off a conversation in the worry it might soon take an awkward turn.

But avoiding socializing creates a paradox: while it decreases your anxiety in the short-term, it increases your shyness in the long-term. The more you try to avoid socializing, the more your anxiety about it intensifies, as you never give yourself a chance to see that interacting with others isn’t as scary as you think it is. You never get the chance to face your nerves and learn how to manage them.

Not only do so-called “avoidance behaviors” actually increase anxiety, they can also make you feel more self-conscious, which, as we’ll see, only perpetuates your feelings of shyness: “There I go again leaving the party early. I’m sure everyone noticed.”

Here are some of the false beliefs that create an unreasonable sense of dread before a social situation even occurs and lead to avoidance behaviors:

The belief that there’s only one way to socialize. Shy people sometimes think that they have to be extroverted and gregarious to be adept at interacting with others. But those who do a lot of listening, interspersed with great questions, are often equally prized as companions. 

The belief that if you’re not amusing or incredibly fascinating, people won’t like you. Having a variety of interests, being well-read, and keeping up with the news all helps one in being a good conversationalist, but you don’t necessarily have to be a hilarious world traveler to be likable. I have friends who aren’t what I’d call amusing or super engaging, but I like them nonetheless because they have other traits that I admire and respect, like being loyal and down-to-earth.

The assumption that “If others want to talk to me, they’ll let me know.” In reality, people oftentimes get so caught up in the moment that socializing with others isn’t even on their radar. Or they’re also shy and are nervous about introducing themselves. Sometimes you have to take the initiative to make contact.

The belief that you’ll never get a second chance to make a first impression. This is a popular maxim, and there’s certainly truth to it. People size up whether they’ll like you within a minute of your meeting, and a bad first impression can lose you a chance at a new friend/girlfriend/business contact. Yet this pressure can lead you to continually postpone introducing yourself, waiting for the perfect, most opportune time — when you think you look good and feel confident and she seems especially receptive – that never comes. It’s better to relax a little, and just go ahead and introduce yourself. More often than not, even if the first encounter is a little awkward you’ll get the chance to recover and show people a better side of yourself the next time around.

The tendency to catastrophize. This is the belief that if some social encounter goes wrong, it will be the end of the world – an utter disaster! Yet if you probe someone who feels this way with a question like, “What’s the worst that can happen?” they often can’t come up with an answer beyond, “I’ll feel embarrassed.” As we talked about last time, social rejection triggers the primal survival part of the brain, as being accepted used to be essential for staying alive. But these days, a brush off doesn’t mean you’re destined to die alone on the savanna. It actually won’t have any effect on you whatsoever, except for what you allow yourself to feel and think about the encounter.

The tendency to draw overly general and personal conclusions from one’s missteps. This is also known as “me/always/everything” thinking. A shy person with a me/always/everything mindset automatically believes that when a social encounter goes less than ideally, he is the one who caused the problem (me), that he invariably makes social encounters awkward (always), and that his social faux pas undermine all aspects of his life (everything).

If the shy person were to actually sit down and think things through, he’d likely discover that oftentimes it’s not his fault when a social encounter goes awkwardly; it can be the other person’s miscues that are to blame or perhaps a distraction in the environment made talking difficult. He’d also see that there are times when he does successfully navigate social situations; our minds are biased towards ruminating on things that go awry, while taking little notice of all the times things go smoothly! Finally, he’d realize that just because a few social encounters are bumpy, it doesn’t mean the rest of his life will suck.

Here’s an example of a shy person using me/always/everything thinking, and how such faulty assumptions might be countered:

Me: “Man, Grace didn’t call back. I must have said something that upset her or made me look like a doofus.” (The reason that Grace didn’t call back could be due to a whole bunch of factors that don’t involve you: she could be busy at work or in the hospital; maybe she lost your phone number; or Grace could be shy herself and has been waiting on you to call her.)

Always: “I always make myself look like an idiot in front of others. What’s the use in even trying to talk to people?” (Is this really true? Sure, maybe you did do something that was a bit awkward in front of Grace, but there are plenty of times when you interact with others without a hitch, like at work, church, or with your friends. Don’t discount the positive! You’re more capable than your negative brain thinks you are!)

Everything: “I’m such a loser.” (You’re a loser just because of one bad social encounter? That’s probably not true. You may have a good job and are excelling at it. You’ve got a few close friends that are with you through thick and thin. You have a hobby that you really enjoy. You have a roof over your head. Etc., etc.)

When a shy person gives free rein to me/always/everything thinking, the thought of engaging socially with others seems so fraught with risk to their psyche and self-worth, that it feels best to opt out of it altogether.

Faulty Beliefs and Behaviors That Increase Anxiety/Shyness During a Social Interaction

The types of negative thoughts outlined above can create anxiety/shyness about a pending social engagement and the desire to avoid such events. At those times when a social encounter cannot be skipped, this premeditated stress can then be compounded by certain faulty beliefs you engage in while you’re interacting with someone.

Unfortunately, when we start feeling anxious, our focus shifts inwards and we become acutely self-conscious. This self-consciousness just leads to more anxiety, which leads to us feeling more and more shy. Here’s what contributes to this negative cycle:

Extreme self-awareness. Freud argued that shy people are narcissists. That seems harsh, but in a sense he was quite right. While shy people aren’t vying to be the center of attention amongst a group of people (the thought of doing so would be petrifying), they are the center of attention in their own minds.

Shy and socially anxious people are extremely self-conscious. All they think about is themselves: How do I look? Was that joke funny? Can they tell I’m nervous? Do they like me? Did I say the wrong thing?

When shy people begin to experience the symptoms of anxiety and worry like feeling hot and sweaty, having trembling hands, stuttering, or drawing blanks before speaking, they turn inward and begin concentrating on these symptoms instead of focusing on the person with whom they’re interacting. Oftentimes after they part ways with someone, they’ll kick themselves for not asking him or her more questions. They couldn’t remember to be interested in the other person, because they were so busy thinking about themselves!

The more you pay attention to how awkward and anxious you’re feeling, the more self-conscious you feel, which makes you act more awkward and anxious, and the cycle continues. Self-consciousness keeps our shy feelings going and reinforces in our minds that socializing is scary or at a minimum awkward.

Luckily, just because we’re thinking a lot about ourselves, and we think everyone is noticing our “slip-ups” and nervousness, this is usually not at all the case as we’ll now see.

The belief that people are paying more attention to you than they actually are. As Nicholas Epley notes in his book Mindwise, mindreading is something all humans do on a regular basis. Our ability to read minds makes social interaction possible; it’s how we figure out if someone is annoyed with us even if they don’t explicitly say so, and how we discern the meaning behind coy smiles or raised eyebrows. While we’re pretty good at mindreading, we sometimes make mistakes. This is especially true if you’re shy, as your anxiety-induced negativity bias leads you to make faulty assumptions as to what other people are actually thinking and feeling.

As we just noted, shy people retreat inward and focus on their anxious feelings. But they then flub at mindreading by assuming that others around them can notice how nervous or shy they feel and that others are judging them negatively for it.

But here’s the reality: your sweaty palms and nervousness are probably not observable. Even if your shy symptoms were apparent, most people are so caught up in their own selves that they don’t even notice. And if your symptoms did catch someone’s attention, they probably won’t give much thought to it at all and will move on to thinking about or doing something else.

This isn’t just comforting talk to make shy folks feel better; studies on the so-called “spotlight effect” back-up the fact that people pay much less attention to you than you think. In one study performed at Cornell, researchers had students put on t-shirts with a giant, smiling Barry Manilow head pasted on the chest and then had them knock on a door of a classroom filled with a bunch of other students filling out questionnaires. The student wearing the Manilow tee had to go to the front of the class and talk to the researcher. To draw as much attention to the t-shirt wearer as possible, the researcher told them to sit down, but right before they sat down, they were instead told to leave. The researchers hypothesized that because the students were wearing a cheesy t-shirt they would feel the spotlight effect especially strongly during this awkward moment, and would believe that all eyes were on them.

This turned out to be the case: when the researchers asked the students who had worn the Manilow t-shirts to estimate how many people noticed their shirt, they guessed about half. Yet when the researchers surveyed the classroom about the Manilow model, only 25% of them recalled the tee. As David McRaney, author of You Are Not So Smart, notes, “In a situation designed to draw attention, only a quarter of the observers noticed the odd clothing choice [emphasis mine].”

Basically, the mindreading conclusions shy people commonly draw are exaggerated: people are simply not paying as much attention to you as you think.

Faulty Beliefs and Behaviors That Increase Anxiety After a Social Interaction

Unfortunately, the negative reinforcement of self-consciousness doesn’t stop when the social engagement is avoided or awkwardly endured. Instead, it is often further entrenched when a shy person has:

The habit of engaging in negative post-mortems. Shy people often engage in negative post-mortems of social encounters that reinforce their faulty, negative beliefs about socializing.

They’ll analyze a conversation they had earlier in the day, but just focus on what they thought went wrong. They’ll keep replaying the moments where they feel they acted awkwardly. The problem with these ruminations however, is that shy people likely don’t have enough information to accurately assess how things really went down.

Researchers have found that because shy people are so self-conscious during a social engagement, they remember fewer details of the event than others who were more comfortable. Shy people are so focused on their inner thoughts and feelings that they’re not really paying attention to what’s going on around them. Because they lack details of what actually happened, they will then fill in the gaps of their memory with “facts” based on the negative feelings they experienced during the social encounter.

Yet just because you felt embarrassed about something, doesn’t mean you actually did or said anything that caused someone to think less of you. It’s easy to mistake your own feelings – which seem all-consuming and incontrovertible because they’re inside your own brain! – with what objectively happened outside yourself.

Negative post-mortem ruminating simply reinforces negative beliefs about socializing, which triggers anxiety about engaging with others, which causes the person to either avoid socializing or, if they do socialize, to be extremely self-conscious about it, which makes them afterwards feel quite embarrassed and glum about how the encounter went…and on the cycle of shyness goes.

Pulling It All Together: The Vicious Cycle of Shyness

Putting the above together, shyness can often be a vicious cycle that looks something like this:

shy1

Understanding this cycle is the key that unlocks the power to overcoming shyness. You simply have to work at disrupting the cycle by targeting a specific point or points in it. The points in the cycle that will provide the most bang for your buck are working on becoming less self-conscious and reducing avoidance behaviors, but you should also work on changing other aspects like putting an end to engaging in faulty beliefs and negative post-mortems.

I know. It’s easier said than done, but it is possible. In next week’s post, we’ll show you how.

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Sources:

Overcoming Social Anxiety and Shyness

Shyness: Understanding, Hope, and Healing